The influence of software developers has taken over the business world, with DevOps mentalities driving innovative startups to great success, from Facebook to Amazon to Netflix.

But the agility of software-led business can be lost on legacy enterprises, now looking to keep pace with a cloud-native, mobile-ready world. Here to weigh in on the state of the enterprise from a DevOps standpoint is Gene Kim (pictured), a DevOps enthusiast, author, researcher and founder of IT Revolution.

“There’s no doubt that the DevOps principles and practices were pioneered in the tech giants,” Kim said. “But I’ve long believed with a certain level of certainty that as much economic value as they’ve created, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real value will be created when the largest, most complex organizations on the planet adopt the same principles and patterns.”

Kim spoke with John Furrier and Rebecca Knight, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the .NEXT event in Anaheim, California. They discussed DevOps mentality within enterprise environments, as well as his latest book, “The Unicorn Project” (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Embracing DevOps, fighting ancient systems

Kim has chronicled the DevOps journey through his novel “The Phoenix Project” and his organization IT Revolution, and he has a new novel called “The Unicorn Project” due out in November. Although there are millions of developers in the world, only about a half-million are at the tech giants, according to Kim.

“If we can get those … developers as productive as if they were at Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, that generates trillions of dollars of economic value per year,” Kim said. “And with that much economic value being created, that will have undoubtedly incredible societal improvement outcomes as well. So it’s been such a treat to help chronicle that journey.”

Right now, DevOps is still in the early stages, and Kim believes that the world is only about 3% of the way there to really embracing DevOps. This is due to the massive resistance within older systems.

“DevOps is often a group rebelling against an ancient, powerful order, forces far beyond their control,” Kim said. “I think that’s kind of the typical situation, and so we’re a long way away from DevOps being the dominant orthodoxy.”

Companies such as Capital One Financial Corp. and Target Stores Inc., however, are just two of the enterprises that have embraced DevOps wholeheartedly, as Kim pointed out. In order to make the shift, changes have to come on an operational level where both developers and operations infrastructure are seen as builders that work hand-in-hand.

“Developers cannot be productive if they are mired in infrastructure, and so you get peak productivity, focus, flow and joy when you don’t have to deal with concerns outside of the business feature and the business problem you want to solve,” Kim stated.

In order to evolve in the digital transformation, it is crucial to continue to learn and have a mentality of learning. And that is why DevOps is something that Kim is so passionate about.

“We all have to be continual learners, and every year that goes by there are more miracles being created for us to be able to use to solve problems,” Kim said. “I think the lesson is, if we’re not always focused on being a continual learner, there’s great joy that comes with it and great peril if we choose to forego it.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of .NEXT 2019. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the .NEXT conference. Neither Nutanix Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE